A study done by cpcstrategy.com comparing metrics such as traffic, CPC rates, revenue, conversion rate, and cost of sale between Google Shopping and Amazon Product Ads has revealed surprising facts and figures. The study included data from over 200 advertisers and involved analyzing over 6 million clicks.
While the third quarter of 2012 revealed Google Shopping’s average CPC rates of $0.30, the fourth quarter pegged the Google Shopping CPC at $0.31 against the CPC rate of Amazon Product Ads at $0.41. Google’s CPC rate was thus 32.5 percent lower than that of Amazon in that study period.
Other than Become and Pricegrabber, all other CSEs (comparison search engines) witnessed a rise in CPC rates and CSEs now need to pay for traffic on Google, which in the past used to be free.
In terms of traffic, the study revealed that Google Shopping sent merchants 96.08 percent more traffic when compared to Amazon Product Ads. While Google reigned supreme in sending traffic to merchants, Pricegrabber took second position, with Nextag taking third, Shopping.com taking fourth, and Amazon Product Ads taking fifth position.
However, in terms of conversion rates, it was Amazon Product Ads that beat Google Shopping. Amazon Product Ads witnessed an impressive rise of 57.5 percent to 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 as compared to the same quarter in 2011. On the other hand, Google Shopping’s conversion rate decreased by 22.35 percent to 2.4 percent, when compared to the same quarter in 2011.
Google Shopping managed to beat Amazon Product Ads by an average of 32.77 percent in terms of being more cost effective for merchants in the third and fourth quarter of 2012. Both rivals were back to back when it came to cost of sale, but Google managed to edge Amazon out in this metric.
Google Shopping has proved that it is still king of comparison shopping engines by remaining ahead of other rivals including Amazon Product Ads.